Piggy Tales
by Bushtuckapenguin
Summary: Ambrose may look like a beach resort but every faunus better have a sturdy set of running shoes. Even the local Hunter Institute will grind us back to dust. But Mercutio Maddox has our back. He's finding young faunus, training us to defend ourselves because our common enemy is growing stronger, more aggressive and Mad Maddox knows something worse is waiting.


_For an illustrated version of this chapter visit ( arcadiaacademy dot net ) and find many other wonderful things. A full description at the end of the chapter._

**Piggy Tales  
><strong>Chapter One: _This Little Pig_

An unwise man once said that if you want anything done, assign it to a lazy person. The logic of the theory states that they will always find the fastest and most efficient method for the task at hand. Whoever started this propaganda had never actually worked with the world's workshy because what you actually got is something sloppy, ten days late and mostly plagiarized from the back of cereal boxes.

Even then, in her own opinion Domino wasn't lazy; she was energy conservative. Or at least she could be on the days she could be bothered by that many syllables, but today was Sunday so she wouldn't.

To the naked eye she was just another teenager slouched on the couch, one hand in a bowl of potato chips and tapping furiously away at_ Grimm Wars 5: Blood Vengeance_, but one always had to remember Remnant was a dangerous place, especially for a pig faunus. Her life started with ravenous Grimm and finished with angry protesters who thought she looked better with scrambled eggs-if she was lucky. You had to live on your toes, be ready for any and every emergency to spring into action!

Her nose twitched. The air shifted around the door crack carrying the scent of entitlement and a floral perfume dense enough to float a cargo ship. A floorboard creaked. Footsteps stamped down the hall and the door flung open.

Domino vanished.

The dark figure haloed on the threshold stared into the dark little room, stomped in and flung wide the curtains letting the afternoon sunlight splash the room like acid. In a way that most couches don't, it hissed.

"God Domino, you're such a slob! Mum asked you to do the breakfast dishes hours ago! And she hates it when you get the furniture damp. We wished you only smelled like wet dog. That washes out."

Hovering above the couch was a barely perceptible was a haze. The faint glimmer of molten gold, rippling like dawn on an undisturbed millpond.

"Ug!" The second figure threw up her hands, grabbing the air as if to throttle it before stamping around and wretching up the bowl of chips. Suddenly the illusion broke as from the air a liquidy hand tried to snatch it back. Water spilled off it revealing a disembodied hand fighting back like a late night creature feature. "Mine!"

Domino didn't catch the pompous smirk in time as her sister let go. The bowl sailed backwards fountaining chips and crumbs.

"Now you're going to have to clean that up too," Dahlia trilled.

Anyone who said cats and dogs were natural rivals had never had sisters. Oh brothers would scuffle, fight and fart on each other, but having sisters was a life of physical, social and psychological espionage that put world powers to shame. Dahlia would would burn the ground and sow it with salt just see their expression. Admittedly Domino was no less guilty of the scorched earth approach but Dahlia licked up other peoples hate like syrup.

"Sure, more for me," Domino shrugged, shaking herself off and surveying the massacre. As she continued to dust herself off she found a crisp, lonely but whole tucked into platinum pigtails. She held it wistfully for a moment, mourning its brethren but popped it in and savoured the sour goodness. "Aaaand...I was going to do it right after I beat level twenty two. I'm almost there."

"No wonder you're fat," she danced around her, trying a different tactic. Dahlia was the pretty, graceful and petite younger sister, her milk blue eyes would always look down on Domino, even if she was four centimeters shorter. She may have been born a faunus, but she still regarded everyone as the muck at the bottom of a petri dish, except without the culture.

_Probably something she got from mum._

So it wasn't like she took Dahlia's ingrained disdain personally. Still covered in salt and vinegar, Domino grinned and lunged for a bearhug, "I'm not fat, I'm huggable, I'm festively plump! I'm-"

"A lard arse. Aren't you working today at that slop house?" she snapped, fending off the grubby hands.

Beneath Domino's olive skin there was a blush. "It's not a slophouse! Brie's Burgers is a fine establishment! Full of fine human/ faunus equality, catering to all connoisseurs of salt, grease and char! It's just that the locals have yet to recognise her particular palate, and until then she has to be budget conscious-"

Dahlia barked a laugh, "Your swanky words doesn't change the fact no one wants to eat faunus-made food! They think we have rabies! If you want to get anywhere in this life, Domino you have to be better than a fast food jockey. You're embarrassing mum. I can't believe I'm explaining this to you but you're eighteen! You've graduated high school, barely, what are you going to do with your life? Rosalyn has more university offers than you and she's twelve!"

"I've got offers, I've got the letters in my room. I've been accepted to Beacon and Manga Opus and Safe Port over in the West. I'm a self made pig, Dahl! I don't beg like a spaniel every time I want something. Once I have the funds together-"

"You can't lie to me Domino, I've been going through the mail everyday for my own acceptance letters and not a single one has been stamped to you!" The little pig faunus flounced out of the room with a giggle, her little tail waggling under her skirt like a puppy dog.

Domino held her confident swagger just long enough to hear her sister's bedroom door slam. Everything sagged. Her shoulders drooped, her cocky smile shrank into a thin lipped grimace and her knees sank into the couch; like a sad marionette whose performance was over.

Who was she kidding. Domino Swindon was the twisted, dying branch on her flourishing family tree. Or just the sap.

In spite of being a faunus, her father was a lawyer successfully lobbying for faunus rights in the big city. Her mother supported him, the charming socialite at the top of any guest list with a musical laugh and tittering anecdote. Dahlia was only sixteen and a musical genius who could coax notes from the air like birds and Rosalyn, sweet little twelve year old Rosalyn was a literal genius who graduated class valedictorian.

Domino was proud of her youngest sister, she just wish they weren't class mates. It was so embarrassing.

And Domino; chubby, eighteen year old Domino. A year after graduating was still only qualified to ask, "Would you like fries with that?"

As the crumbs crunched under her substantial ass, she raked her hands back through her hair. She may have felt alone, but Domino was like everyone on the cusp of adulthood, wondering who she was and what she was meant to be. She just needed a chance.

She could wallow, _or_ she could get her chores done, beat Level 22 and smear Mega Ursa into a patch of bloody pixels.

And the miserable little girl vanished, as if the metamorphose in reverse with a tall stride and a vicious world-eating grin. If she told the lie loud enough, long enough and often enough then maybe one day she would believe it.

* * *

><p>Washing dishes always left Domino conflicted. On one hand it was like asking a pig to play in mud, but on the other it was profiling. <em>Just<em> because her semblance was water based didn't mean she could be equally good at vacuuming, or dusting or cooking.

The fact that she avoided all those chores like they were carcinogenic was beside the point, it was the look of things.

She squinted in the afternoon sun. Its bright golden glare turned the simple shadows of trees and buildings into deep black pits. Domino hated shadows, they made a casual stroll more like OCD slalom because the difference between a slightly shady divot and deep dark whole were one and the same. Her heterochromatic eyes, though striking, were almost useless. Well, the brown one was fine but the blue was worse than no eye at all. Hell, at least if it was one eye she could wear a kickass eyepatch, but instead it was like seeing the world through dirty dishwater and she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if she were inside of it.

Swirling her hand amongst the brownish water, she withdrew it with a film of water clinging like a glittering evening glove, if you discounted the bits of leftover porridge and bacon bits. She frowned at it, and she reached into herself. She always wondered what it was like not to have control over your aura, to be disconnected from something that was your soul. It was her security blanket. It made her feel safe and special, and with just a pinch of effort she could pull it in tight and-

The water glinted like dewdrops and vanished. Well, almost. The water was too dull and filled with ketchup to complete the illusion but her plump fingers were little more than misty, skeletal mirages, like a heat haze on a blazing summers day.

She reached out into the air with her other hand, wriggled and stretched and rolled her wrist like a preparing pianist. Little by little her aura netted the air moisture turning her left hand into a shimmery faceted crystal, pure. She held it up to the setting sun, beams of light spearing between her fingers. She concentrated again, refracting light through each molecule until- Domino _hurumphed_. Again, an imperfect illusion but this time there wasn't enough water to do the job.

"Wo-oow!" She turned towards the dreamy, wistful voice. "I wish I could do that."

Domino smiled, embarrassed by her audience standing in the kitchen doorway.

Dahlia was the changling child of an art critic and a ninth grade maths teacher and lived each day in smug self absorption. Modesty was something that happened to other people. The little puke had once gloated, when no one else could possibly hear the golden child, that she wasn't gifted but destined. Some were meant for greater things, and others were born to scrub.

But little Roselyn was her sister. She was only twelve and her mind that zipped and sizzled with theories that ignited the universe. She thought it was a gift, one not taken for granted and shared with as many as possible. And the best part was, despite IQ gulf that compared a gnat to a neurosurgeon, she still looked up to her dumb big sister with the same awe and idolization she did when she was five. That kind of adoration made her hard to resent. Hell, even now she still copied Domino's white flaxen pigtails, although she kept her porcine ears clamped tight to her scalp beneath a bandana.

"Oh, you know," Domino said sheepishly, shaking the droplets back into the sink. An extra flick got rid of the orange rind.

"No, that's so coool!" she squealed, with a hiccupy little grunt. "I try and I try, and then I think about the energy conversion required between hydrogen molecules and the oxygen and then I need a piece of paper-"

"Well that's it, you think too much and I don't do that."

"Tell me about it," Dahlia said appearing from behind, shoving past Roz and pulled an apple from the fridge. She put it on the cutting board, daintily cut it and returned half back to the fridge. "Some of us have to watch our weight."

"I can help you shed that fat head?" Domino retorted sweetly as the Dahlia flounced out again. "How far do you think I'd get before someone reported her missing?"

"Not even to the end street. She's got those auditions for Dolrado Symphony and mum hasn't stop bragging. Did you know she's trying out for three places this time? Second Violin, Cello Section and Harp. I didn't know you could do that."

"Pulling strings has always been a hobby, she's now making it a career," Domino said with a shrug. "How's yours coming. Dahlia said you had another offer from Britta University, and Dolrado. They're... far."

"It's the closest that will accept me. All these east coast universities would rather take a trained circus elephant over a faunus. Besides, its just the pre-program-"

A clod of mud hit the kitchen window cutting both girls off with a yelp. It spattered and clung before the sloppy blob trickled down. It was followed by the saw like warble of old man cursing. A terse but contained one followed. Domino and Roz leaned to peer out past the smear where her father and their neighbour stood inches from each other over the white picket divider.

Their shared hedge was a thin demilitarized zone and the only thing that prevented all out war. If so much as a stray hair crossed that invisible line it would be claimed and burned out of spite. A tree in the back yard that shared the boundary was a seventeen year old war veteran, every limb contorted in the extreme to benefit one side or the other and trimmed with such vindictiveness neither side could reach the fruit anymore without a step ladder.

Either it was an old man or a pebble skinned prehistoric raptor trained to wear pants. It hefted a loaded shovel back like a catapult, wriggling it tauntingly with teeth bared.

Mr Moore was a neighbour of all their years in Autoch and all of it filled street gossip, intimidation and just plain nastiness. He was a jaundiced man; from his sallow skin, nicotine teeth, stained loafers, yellow belly and tarnished soul. It was true that none of their block was particularly faunus-friendly but were at least neutrally polite to the social climbing pigs. Moore wore his prejudice as proud as any banner.

"Watcha gonna do about it, Swine?" he gnashed gleefully. "Gotcha big pep talk coming, don't want any... incidents, eh?"

Mr Swindon straightened a stiff as rigor mortis and with as much emotion. "Yes Mr Moore, I will be speaking to the Town Council of Dolrado to discuss the faunus housing disparity and so far its going very favourably. We're expecting audits of the Eastern Coalition Banks if there has been loan partisanship. I expect a flood of fresh loans to belay these allegations... But you know house prices are so high in Dolrado, I expect many will look to cheaper estates." Her father, tall and dignified, offered a sweetsmile- 100% artificial preservatives. "Autoch is a growing community."

Moore's lip curled in disgust, his upheld shovel drooping as he considered the implications. Domino chose this moment to skip out the door and the old man saw an opening.

"So you can breed more of these fat loser kids of yours? Look at her, no job, no life, no future! Just sucking the welfare system dry with your 'minority species' garbage! Hah! That's our future, litter after litter of dirty, diseased animals!"

"G'day Mr Moore! I see you've got new slippers!" She made sure her grin was wide, exposing an underbite, featuring tusk like stalagmites as their main attraction. Domino liked rubbing salt on wounds and whatever Dahlia said, flaming dog poop bags were always in vogue.

Beady eyes widened in fury, "You dirty, scum slobbering pig!" The shovel launched. Domino reflexes put venus fly traps to shame. She stared dumbly as the heavy wet pat wobbled through the air like flapjack and slicked down her front with the sloppy _shloock_ sound of a broken drain. A thin rivulet dribbled between her eyes.

Mr Swindon gawped for several silent seconds while inside Domino could hear the thump and crazed giggles and snorts of Dahlia rolling and laughing. He reeled to life with a barely restrained rage. "Get inside now. The police will be serving your assault charges and you better prepare yourself for ten years of testimony to take what pitiful pittance your life is worth. Say what you want to me Frank, but if you come within ten meters of my family again I will drag you through your little mud patch every day for the rest of your life. Dahlia! Get to your damn room!"

Moore was trembling. There had been years of dark menace especially when they had been young and new. Broken windows, strewn trash and burning mailboxes but not once had there been anything physical against the Swindon's themselves. He opened his mouth to speak but a look from Mr Swindon reached out like a hand around his throat, cutting him off with a guttural choke. He hurried back inside, glancing anxiously over his shoulder and slammed the door.

Domino looked up from what was little more than a peppering still in shock. She concentrated for a moment and lifted the lumps away in a watery swipe. She had nothing against mud, good honest muck but her dad was by her side instantly, using his good shirt to smear it further into her scalp.

"Okay," he breathed in and slicked back his blonde hair. His dorky little bowler hat fell away revealing his choppy pigs ears which flopped across his forehead.

"Don't. Don't sell me some tall tale because I know you're about as innocent as the cat that ate the canary. I just need to know if you're all right."

"Just a bit of dirt-"

"That's not what I meant. You know that's nothing but hot air, right?" Mr Swindon guided her to the front step and they settled down.

The sun was now red, the shadows long and a cooling breeze settled over the hot stagnant air. They stared out over the street for a moment. The Swindon family were an uncommon sight in mid-income suburbia. Through her mother's inheritance and her father's determination they had escaped from life's crab-bucket in a way most faunus never would.

Life hadn't always been easy. In fact buying the house behind them had been the turning point but before then they had scraped and hid just like everyone else. Hiding was easier. No ears, or tail, or tusks or snub nose.

Everyone thought her mother was human.

Domino's hands unconsciously reached up. When she was born there had been... a breakdown... despair... fear for the life of her first daughter. His father had snatched away the scissors just in time, but her left ear still had the deep, gouged notch.

"Eh, can't say he's lying."

"No, don't ever think that! You're only eighteen, you're still trying to figure out who you are-"

"I know who I am." She snapped harder than she intended and winced as her father flinched. "I know who I want to be," she corrected quietly.

"We've talked about this honey. It's not the right time. We're making progress and maybe in a few years Magna will have accept faunus but until then we can't afford to send you across the country."

"Dahlia has more instruments than fingers, and is always going away for concerts-"

"Its much easier for her-"

"And Roz has a million different colleges asking for her-"

"She has scholarships-"

"But what about me?"

Both stared at their feet which shuffled. Domino's fingers drummed a tattoo in the air, a blob of water rolling back and forth, coiling through her fingers like a snake. An anxious habit.

"Dad, do you even believe I could be a hunter? This is the only thing I'm good at. I mean, watch this."

Domino held out her hand where the water collected into a ball. She closed her eyes, hunched her shoulders and squeezed everything. Every muscle, all her aura and every thought into an idea. Solid, slippery, frozen. After several strained moments that for all outward appearances looked like constipation, she finally opened her eyes and her palm.

"What is it?"

Her smile faltered. "I- It's ice."

Mr Swindon poked the chip smaller than a fingernail which was already melting away. He sighed. "Believe, yes. Want, no. The Grimm are creatures we still don't understand, constantly striking our borders. I lost my brother to a Duskwing. It carried him off when they breached the borders of Dolrado in the middle of the night. It haunts me, my little piglet. In my dreams his screams become yours, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Mr Swindon's eyes became glassy as he gazed out at the horizon. They may have seen the towering sentry towers but he stared into the past. Domino looked with him, imagining the titan-sized bat grim plucking the fleeing brother like a skill tester claw and carrying him away into the darkness. No one knew why the Grimm hated humanity. Some say they feared their eventual dominance of the land, some said that with no soul of their own they fed on the human aura like vampires.

Whatever the reason, Domino didn't care. She just wanted that feeling of worth, of being special, being chosen.

"Dad, if I got a chance to be a Hunter, would you let me?"

Mr Swindon rose from his reveries like a man surfacing for air, slowly and hesitantly. He looked at her silently for a moment and Domino watched his expression, squinting one eye as she did to focus. Behind his brown eyes she knew he was carefully examining the evidence, weighing the benefits and the realities against his true feelings.

"My little porkchop, I'd fight a horde of duskwing just to give you a chance. Now, lets get inside and see what's for dinner. Your sister has that audition next week and needs her violin tuned in Ambrose. I think I can get your mother to spring for an extra ticket and there's a Dim Sum place I know you'll love!"

* * *

><p>"Ambrose is not faunus friendly. Wear your hat at all times, stay in the Pens and don't do anything stupid. Domino, promise me."<p>

"Sure dad." The yo-yo went up and down. Its string was thick weave, perfectly balanced red and yellow body and lit up with lights the faster it spun. And doubled as a ranged weapon with +4 damage in annoying sisters. She called Blitzer and it was the closest thing she had to a hobby or talent. Chubby fingers that fumbled anything smaller than a basketball instead coaxed Blitzer with a flip into _Hang Man's Noose._

"Don't just say it like that, mean it!"

"Promise dad," Domino said breezily, _Splitting the Atom_ without a thought. Her mismatched eyes glittered hungrily. Autoch could barely be called a village, and she had once visited the much bigger town of Dolrado when she was fifteen for a school trip, but Ambrose was a CITY! It was a place that took more than fifteen minutes to cross at a leisurely stroll! It would have more stores than just the basic butcher, baker, hair dresser, munitions store! And the food! Her lips quivered at the thought of fast food that wasn't a burger or fish and chips! There were trifles, and cakes, and everything could be deep fried of you were determined.

She was already spinning on her heel for the the area colloquially known in Ambrose as Eat Street; a high end area where she could spend her afternoon drooling over fancy cakes like a child in a Dickensian Christmas story.

"No, promise me. Stay in the Pens!" Mr Swindon grabbed her shoulder and spun her back to meet his severe stare.

Domino smiled back as innocent as a lamb faunus. The yo-yo dawdled at the end of its string for a long moment, _Playing Dead_. "Sure dad! The Pens. Right." With an effortless flick of her finger, the it_ Climbed the Rope._

Mr Swindon's lips pressed tight knowing his daughter could lie to his face, would lie to his face and often did just to see what happened. He often wondered if he hadn't played some part in her long distance relationship with reality because while he often preached wisdom, integrity and truth; it was often in best interest of his profession see things from a certain angle or light that was not strictly honest.

But then he realised she was a teenager, who lied simply because the truth was less interesting.

_Loop-de-Loop_ followed by _Snare the Devil_. For a moment the bright yellow body spun busily on the tip her finger before diving like a bungie jumper right back into her waiting hand.

"Come on dad! We're going to be late! They'll close!" Pretty princess Dahlia whined, in one of her crisp little pantsuits Mrs Swindon had probably chosen for her.

The only way safe way to reach Ambrose was by airship, an expensive sixteen hour flight even if you were travelling cattle class. Autoch was hardly more than a village, and Dorado was called a town if you were generous but Ambrose was the exception of the East. Everywhere else were small and scattered hamlets, usually a raggedy rural knot of houses and sentry towers simply because you could only have so much empty space before cartographers got embarrassed. They were like cocooned flies spun and trapped inside a web of roads called the Sylvan Highway. Hah! If it was a Highway, her childhood treehouse was the Grand High Temple of the Saints. It was more like strung together dirt roads and animal tracks that were slightly less dangerous than plunging into the wilds itself.

From a distance it looked like a pearl glittering on a seafoam coast nestled between the protective arms of twin peninsulas, golden Lux and gloomy Skia. Ambrose proper was gorgeous; mansions, suburbia and neat little town houses thriving with it's growing prosperity,snuggling at the base of Lux. Its circling fringe was a squalor, a shanty town exposed to the very edge of the Marvo Mangroves and Vera Rainforest that covered the sheer slopes. The only reason it was called steep and not vertical was because local physicists insisted trees didn't grow at right angles despite all evidence to the contrary.

After father and two daughters disembarked, they wound through the city and crossed the invisible line the invisible line that divided Ambrose proper from the Last Quarter, a ghetto charmingly referred to as the Pens. Domino had seen chess boards with less defined territories. From above she could see the city's divide by a ring of lights, Firewalls. First Tier, Second Tier, Third Tier and the Last Quarter.

The family found a small arcade just of the street called Broad Way. It was a joke, light and shadows fell in a sharp line between them, dividing the gloomy, ghetto Pens from the polished facades of the Third Tier. Domino imagined just stepping across that imaginary line would compel her to burst into a cheery song about bluebirds and sunshine to the accompaniment whistling apple sellers and a line of dancing girls.

Meanwhile the lei motif of the Pens there was the doleful hum of harmonica blues... Well, more like distant screams and threats of violence but reality was a pesky thing.

Domino beamed wistfully to herself, Rocking the Baby and waiting for the appropriate amount of time to pass for the parental unit and snitch to be out of sight.  
>Good. She immediately stuffed away the flat cap that pressed her pig ears against her head like dough into a cup.<p>

Dom, as a pig faunus with mismatched eyes she was effectually blind, she relied much more heavily on her sense of smell make sense of life. The nuances of the world around her, additives, hormones, chemicals all marinated like a good stew in her subconscious. Occasionally a big chunky piece of meat or potato would roil to the top and give her a gut feeling that was more reliable than any newspaper horoscope so she did what she always did when grasping a new situation. She closed her eyes and took in a long, deep breath.

Ambrose was a jewel of the east, growing like mold in a teens lunchbox. It was a coastal city, the smell of brine and fish guts, sand and weed and suntan lotion was carried on ocean breezes. There was a harbour of rust and iron. The bay was rich with silt and vegetation washed down from the Varden River, where a million tributaries twined together and spilled out into the open bay, their smells undiluted but the vastness of the open ocean. It wasn't called Sandy Bay for nothing. She had seen its calm turquoise waters as they flew over, protected by the twin peninsula's.

Skia was a grim and distant shape, barren and rocky some distance from the town on the other side of the river and mangroves. Like a knife's edge slicing apart the dark teal seas.

Lux grew out from the town in a gentle grassy slope higher and higher until it towered out over sea. Gradually the houses turned to mansions, giving it the nickname Snob's Knob. It was crowned by a fairy tale castle and over the roofline could see its foremost spire, an enormous lighthouse that flashed golden across the city.

She tried again, this time she focused on the vegetation, sniffing as she walked down a side ally. The Marvos Mangroves stretched along the banks. It smelled of organic rot, giant trees on stilts with fleshy flag sized leaves, woody snarls of thorny shrubs, palms and vines as thick as industrial cables all swallowed by tide. They merged with Vera Rainforests and Gris Mountains, the distant detritus of thousands of years of decay. They were dark tangles of thickets, filled with poisonous animals and plants of all sorts and infested with Grimm. Little Ambrose was backed against the sheer mountains, and effectively set the rest of Vytal on a tall shelf out of reach of everyone except airship.

But this all natural cocktail of surf and greenery couldn't hide the underlying smell of vomit. It permeated the salty sea air. Not the vomit of a night on the town, extra large anchovy and banana pizza vomit, but of bile. a sour, dissolving stench Domino only knew as _hate_.

It was rare that she came across it even in Autoch. Even ol' Moore had the worn in smell, like if a room long ago housed a litter of excitable puppies but had faded into an acceptable part of life.

But Ambrose hated faunus. Like, really hated them. A kind of disgust and loathing that was usually reserved for tax collectors and bed bugs. Actually, that was a pretty good analysis, she thought. Humans in Ambrose viewed the faunus as parasites. Autoch regarded the faunus uneasily but accepted because it was pretty hard to hate someone for an extra set of ears when a Grimm ate your dog last week, but long time security and a sudden boom in wealth meant Ambrose had seen a sudden need of an unspoken caste system.

And that was where the Pens had come from. Twenty years ago there had been some big disaster, a massive Grimm attack that had reached the heart of Ambrose proper and they established the Tier system of defense. Eight years ago some big company, Donaven something-or-other discovered the rich Dust resources. Property prices skyrocketed. Three years ago everywhere had seen the Grimm populations creep up, becoming more aggressive and invasive. The smaller towns couldn't keep up the defense so it made sense to migrate to the bigger cities.

But the treasure trove of Ambrose was flourishing for another reason.

Dust, Dom mused, with another casual flick of her wrist. Huge, unquenchable seams of all colours ran through those ranges as pure as mountain streams. The Gris Ranges supplied the entire East, making Ambrose the perfect place for Hunters to gather supplies before making an ocean voyage or trek to the more populated Vale and other East cities.

She wandered down a different side street that, though chaotic back alleys filled with trash and the cardboard boxes of the homeless and eventually lead out into Broad Way.

Amber Dust. It was Ambrose's most impressive resource. Incredibly scarce When refined and infused with crystal and refracted in a focused laser was as good as an electric fence against Grimm. Whatever its light properties were, the dark creatures melted under its core like chocolate kettle. Tall iron posts called Torches were alit with a crystalline array, perfectly aligned to catch the beam of the next torch, three beams per post like an invisible barbed wire. Humans pass unmolested, Grimm burned away.

If she could just get out of the gnarled buildings she could probably see one that unintentionally segregated the city.

It all meant that the Ambrose City Council required fewer men inside for security and could spend more money on scouting parties. Heck, half of Autoch was armed at any one time; everyone half trained and half cocked. All her home town had was an ancient wall like someone glued an egg back together. It was more spackle than stone. Citizens of Ambrose spent less time worrying about whether their knife-come-rocket launcher was about to go off, and more time on the necessities of the day. More businesses invested if there wasn't a 50/50 chance their hotdog stand was going to be smashed to bits before the end of the financial year.

And you couldn't deny the Grimm were increasing. Increasing in numbers, increasing in size, increasing in ferocity. It was as if something was feeding them mutant waste.

Domino hopped over a molding mattress with a grimace, rubbing her nose against the constant irritation. The thick, cloying stench of mold and moisture and neglect was the Pens in a nutshell. Navigating was harder then she expected in the low light, and tripped and stumbled against the damp walls.

_And some how its our fault,_ Domino thought with a disgruntled sniff, but regretted it immediately. Aside from rotting food and muck, Domino could smell the acrid smell of fear, like vinegar. She cocked her head quizzically, her ever loved yoyo stalled as turned her head this way and that to get a better view. Fear smelled like vinegar, but overlying the stale odours of sweat and hormones was something sharper and more immediate.

She followed it, coming to an alley crossroads that was little more than where the sewage drains met to flow on. She sniffed again, turning her head this way and that to triangulate. Poverty. Poverty smelled like unwashed clothes and cheap food additives from microwave meals. MSG and ketchup.

She cocked her head. The stench was getting closer. Her ears twitched. Pounding foot steps. Three pairs.

"Quick, this way." It was a hushed, breathless and desperate whisper.

Domino threw herself backwards against the wall, throwing her aura out like a net and dragged close every droplet of moisture in that dank passage. With a wet _shlurpe_ like the last dregs of milkshake she vanished, _Miraging_ out of sight.

Just in time. Squinting hard past her own puddle vision she made out three figures pounding down the backstreet to her left. She sniffed, two young men and a little girl. Related. Fur. Faunus. Mouse faunus?

They darted past, the oldest took advantage of the sudden open space of the drain ditch to push his brother and sister ahead of him. He was an arms length away and smelled of outrage; spicy peppers and blood, and for an instant Domino was sure his eyes met hers. They were brown, dull like fogged glass.

The moment was lost as he ushered his family away.

Domino gave it a moment and exhaled, her gossamer water skin dissipating in a glittery mist.  
>"There!"<p>

She sucked it back and and flung herself back, hunched into the corner. More people. Three male, one female... mature.

"You go that way we'll drive them out past the Seventh Torch! The patrols will be done for the hour and no one will see them!" one shouted. He was dominant, even from a distance he reeked of control and testosterone and... Dom gagged. Her nostril hair _burned_. She shrank back into the gloom. Her brain clumsily strained for a word stronger than vinegar because the hate hit her like a physical force, a visceral violence that wouldn't stop stabbing even if a swat team drew a dozen red beams across his forehead.

Domino, despite her porcine senses didn't believe you could smell mental disorders. Smell was mostly context and, well a life time of trial, error and experience. If she stumbled into a room smelling last week's cod dinner and an over-excited ovary, it fused into the mental image of a very disturbing date.

But this leader felt wrong, a twisted loathing with the pervasiveness of a couch that had absorbed a lifetime of smokers cough.

Her elbows dug deeper into stonework corner riddled with pop cans and mothballs. Her father had warned her there were people out there like this. She didn't believe him. She thought they were all like Mr Moore, hot air and stale prejudices more habit than real emotion but here was someone young and passionate and didn't believe in murder... because you couldn't murder animals. You could however slaughter them.

All these thoughts pounded her dazed mind in a moment. He finally appeared around a corner; a hooded cowl, a bandana concealing his mouth and shadowy pits where the eyes should be. And he paused. Why would he pause?_ There!_ She had startled and dropped Blitzer, rolling into gutter with its blinking blue lights hypnotizing her in horror. A brief chilling glance and he hurtled up the same alley as the mice faunus. His hulking friend pounded after him.

The footsteps echoed and faded into the distance.

Domino exhaled so deeply with relief she was dizzy and needed to brace herself and slid down the wall shaking. The moment, and it had only been a moment, passed.

_Wow,_ she thought dumbly, staring after them but still not feeling safe enough to release her Semblance. The whole episode swallowed her like a storm wave and withdrew just as fast in a wash of disorientating impressions but the terror stayed rooted in her gut, and spun it tight as spaghetti on a fork.

You go that way, we'll drive them out past the Seventh Torch!

Her gaze trailed down the alley.

_Don't do anything stupid. Domino, promise me._

She picked up the muddy yoyo and followed a sluggish drainage trickle out to the main road.

_Seventh Torch._

She took a chance, stepped out into the empty White Way and stood on tip toes. She could just make out one of the Torches which stood guard on the furthest side of the Pens. Okay, she heard a man in passing giving directions. He called one of the Torches _Two O'Clock_, and the Main Watch Tower which was also the main Watch Station, was the Midnight Tower... Which was on the side closest to Snobs Knob of the Lux Peninsula.

_So the Seventh was closest to the river._ Domino thought orientating. _Close to the trees. As far from ears as they can._

She was breathing harder, she always did when anxious continuing to draw in the heavy snorts. She thought she smelled the phantom pain. Pain, a hot burning stench like iron spikes in a blacksmith's furnace. She winced. Because she recognised that gut inkling when she _didn't_ smell it. It was something that went straight to the brain without touching her stubby nose.

She hoped it wasn't hers. Her life hadn't included anything more pressing than an ingrown toenail, and to be perfectly honest she whined like a kicked puppy for weeks.

She stood indecisively in the middle of White Way, clutching Blitzer to her chest like a protective talisman. It was the unofficial road that divided the Pens and Ambrose. She could go back to the Pens. She could go find Eat Street. She could go anywhere she wanted and pretend she hadn't smelt a thing.

Or she could do the right thing. Her father had always said that. _Wisdom is knowing what is right._

She looked from sheltering anonymity of the Pens to the now ember glow of the distant Torch as dusk crept closer. _Dim Sum or death?_

Suddenly a car honked, startling her out of the street. She picked a side. The side of the burning ember Torch.

_You could be a hero!_

It was this thought that moved her into a trot. Although Domino convinced herself she had the heart of a hero, the will of iron and as brave as a lion, it was still trapped in the body of a eighteen year old slacker who thought reaching to the back of the cupboard for the hidden snickerdoodles counted as exercise. She intermittently jogged, staggered and panted her way across town, her pace growing more and more reluctant.

Middle class with its white picket fences and flower boxes blended was long behind her. The Third Tier was the lower middle class using old gumboots and tyres to grow their own veggies. She moved further and further into the Last Quarter, with old car parts and lawn you could lose your dog in. Then with a sickening lurch like the sudden drop of an ocean shelf, lower class became true poverty. The houses were mostly burned husks and splinters, fresh enough that Grimm attacks were still frequent. Domino thought she saw movement, but it looked like most of the occupants this close to the last Firewall had given up.

The worst part was she didn't even need to follow the light, or her nose. She could hear muffled thumps and grunts and thin cries for help. Domino briefly considered leaping into the middle of the fray, demanding they halt in the name of justice and faunus rights and then kicking some serious ass just to let them know who was boss.

Her ears could here the subtle burble of the Varden River, hidden behind the tall swathe of mangrove and broad leaved evergreens. She reached out with both arms, spun thrice in a circle and pulled every drop of moisture she could as close to her skin as she could until she was hidden by water half an inch thick. It was a new personal record, but it was soupy with brine. Aside from the rash that would follow, she experimentally waved a hand. Her camouflage was murky but passable in the low light. Her porky fingers were murky shadows, wavering stubs.

Under the eldritch orange glow of the Seventh Torch, she crept closer through the crumbling brickwork. It was a like a tall iron tree and twice as thick with a rickety ladder up one side to reach the amber crystal work. A dozen gems, carefully faceted and arranged to take every glint in the darkness and focus it on the main crystal spire. It was like a beautiful burning chrysanthemum of fire in the velvet nightfall.

A third way down was flat mirror like crystal, and a two thirds another, relaying an almost invisible shaft a kilometer in either direction, up to the Eighth and down from the Sixth.

Domino poked her head around the corner, squealed and jerked it back like an errant cuckoo clock.

Four figures surrounded the three mice siblings lit by the ember glow.

The first was older than her, with tiny cupped mouse ears twitching among a shock of dark hair like he'd stuck his head in brackish seeweed and those eerie foggy eyes. He had what looked like a splinter of a timber beam which he slashed inexpertly in all directions to keep his family close and his attackers at an arms length. Blood weeped from the wrinkled welts burned criscrossing his bare skin.

The second brother was, she sniffed, almost her age. He had mousy brown hair in a bowl cut giving the impression of a mobile mushroom with thick bottle glasses that could start forest fires if mislaid. He blinked myopically, was slow to react and tripped and stumbled to be swept under his brother's protection.

The last was a little girl, not yet mature but it wasn't going to stop her. Her hands swooped down, picking up the clods of broken mortar and hurled them with the rapid force of an artillery strike.

And around them darted four figures, dark cloaked and menacing masks that shrieked delighted laughter. She peeked again trying to find distinguishing features, anything that could alert the authorities but they were swathed and hidden in hooded cloaks, dark clothes and a triangular bandana masking their lower face.

The first was a brute with the body of a college line-backer and smelled like an old lady's bathroom. Lavender and rose and musky cologne hung around him in a haze and stuffed Domino's nostrils like allergies. His cloak barely reached his knees and hung like an ill fitting circus tent and the bandanna hide a broad, blunt face with an obviously bent and broken nose, and aviator goggles. He sulked in the shadows, leaned back and metal glinted from a hollow sleeve. The weapon leaped out like a striking snake and bungied back into what she could now see as a spear. With bestial grunts he spun twirling and twisting, sometimes rigid and sometimes whiplash, tauntingly grazing Seaweed's body closer and closer.

Another darted in. He cackled like a raven. His own wardrobe was perfectly tailored, its billowing black cloak seeming to swallow his dark skinned body. What Domino thought was a bazooka grinded and unfurled into a huge ornate axe, big and sharp as an executioner's guillotine. It caught the moonlight and crashed down with an earth rending fissure tearing apart the earth and with a glint of dust it crunched shut again, catching Mushroom's pant leg in a panicked cry.

The third thug didn't seem thuggish at all. She stood at a distance regarding the situation distastefully as one would watch a child playing with its food. She seemed to grunt, pulled out a pistol and fired shots at Mushroom's feet until he flailed backwards but Seaweed caught his elbow just in time.

While the three played cat and mouse, one stood back surveying the scene with satisfaction form a crumbling roof. _Him._ He perched like a cat on a mantel, lazily enjoying the show and waiting for them to tire. The sea air blew around him and carrying the disgusting smell of vinegar and sweat. Him. His cloak billowed out and on it was a symbol outlined in white. A spade?

The siblings flattened themselves against the invisible boundary of the Firewall's pale orange stream.

Because in the dark was a growl, a low rumble that reached inside like a primordial fear of the dark. It was a predator. A Grimm. A jaegerfang. Domino squinted hard for the enormous fangs of the sabre toothed feline. She saw it, a flick of a tail as round as her own chubby thigh. It retreated into the shadows again, biding its time.

Domino's throat closed hard, she choked on her own spit with horrific realisation. The Grimm knew to be here. It was waiting patiently because it knew sooner or later it would get its dinner. It was trained. Faunus after faunus must have been herded here and tossed like sacrificial lambs by barbaric, sadistic children.

The brown haired brother staggered again like a drunk and splatted in the dirt. The spear wielding brute rocketed up for a pile drive with an elbow like a cruise liner piston aimed to bust his little head like a water melon. A crash tackle lifted them both off the ground and skimmed the dirt in a flurry of dust as Seaweed and Brute thrashed to be upright. The female darted from the side. She snatched the little girl to fling her out across the boundary but Black was between them, stabbing out with his splinter.

_Wumph._

Domino swung her head. The perch was empty!

The Spade left his roost, touching down light as a feather and swept kicked, knocking one foot out and with an almost gentle nudge off balance, sent Seaweed staggering out beyond the Fire Wire.

Like a flash of lightning the jaegerfang lunged at the tossed morsel, but recoiled back to the safety of the shadows hissing like a water in a giant furnace. The trees echoed with the low yowl of impatience, branches snapping and leaves crackling as it paced beyond the reach of the Torch.

Oh heck, they were really going to do it! Despite smelling evil incarnate, Domino thought team were doing it as a nasty prank, like shoving your sister onto the railway tracks, but they really meant to feed the mice to the grimm. Spade divided the family like a reaper. Behind the impassive mask there was a soft laugh. It revolted her.

_Shadow, look at his shadow!_ Her subconscious had been waving its arms for attention caught what her lousy eyes hadn't. His shadow wasn't right. Every other shadow fled from the amber light of the torch, but Spade's shadow reached out. It loomed before him, slightly asynchronous to its owner.

_Gunna be a hero now, fatty?_

The shadow grew. It bulged. Unlike its weak and trembling brethren it was just as black as its owner. Spade stretched out a hand, his dark twin mirrored with flexing fingers like talons. Like the puppet show of the damned, the shade reached out. Spindly tendrils crawled along the ground hunting like hound dogs until they found and melted like candle wax around the throat of Seaweed... or to be more precise, Seaweed's shadow.

Dom gasped. Seaweed's arm was yanked skyward by the invisible force. He fought it but he may as well have fought iron manacles. It reached its full length and still the shadow dragged him inexorably upwards, up and up until his toes pirouetted in joint-aching circles. Seaweed fought back. He pawed and kicked and raked his hands but the all passed harmlessly through. Like the nightmares her childhood, Domino watched as Spade's shadow caress his cheek with its inky talon. She screamed inwardly, her skin crawled like a thousand ants. What did it feel like? Like the pain of pins and needles? The sticky pain of old ice? Or nothing, just the desperate need to shudder and scrub to the bone even though you'd never be clean again?

Muffled from behind his mask, Spade laughed in a voice that was genuinely amused by the faunus's death struggles. "You'll die and your dirty litter-mates will watch. I'll make sure, I'll cut their eyelids off as trophies. I think I'll let your sister go, so for the rest of her life she remember she watched her brothers die, and there was nothing she could do about it."

The girl screamed, fear pitched to shatter glass and Domino clawed at her head, pressing her ears into her scalp to drown out the wretched sound.

And with flick the shadow talon wrenched Seaweed into the air by his throat. He gagged, dark locks falling across his face in a shroud. His whole body lifted clean from the ground. His legs spasmed and his spine arched like a man in the grip of the hangman's noose. And then the inky arm lengthened; thin, spindling and unwavering as an iron bar stretched out across the Fire Wire.

Lured by the bait, Domino saw the white flash of the jaegerfang's skull cap emerge from the left. Feeding time was near, barely a scrap but enough to bide until the next meal. Bit by bit, illuminated by the burning glow of the Seventh Torch he was dragged closer. The grimm cat rumbled in the dark anticipating human blood poisoned by fear.

"Noooo!" Mushroom howled, snatching up the fallen stake and making a clumsy, leaping stab. Spade pivoted with the grace of a dancer and the force of a wrecking ball. Little brother spun twice around before hitting the dirt senseless.

The Shade's grip did not budge.

_Do something! You wanted to be a hero!_ Domino's head screamed. She wanted to charge out there, shout, _Hey you!_ in a voice like thunder but her legs wouldn't move and her lips sealed closed. Every instinct told her she was useless sack of fat and they were cold blood killers. She hid in the shadows and sank to her knees, defeated by her own cowardice. She closed her eyes and turned away.

With its meal within reach the jaegerfang grew brave. It leaped down from the branches like a disembodied shadow itself, its skullcap reflecting the scalding light of the Torch. In the air stretched its long feline stride for the kill in a moment that lasted forever. It's skin cracked open like the vents of a dormant volcano. Bright lines like lava shone. Hair and alien flesh smoldered and hissed and drifted up like ash across a shattered moonscape. It no longer cared. _Fooood!_

Seaweed's eyes did not leave his family.

_Whoosh! Whoosh!_

Moonlight flickered.

An outline crossed the sky, shots fired like canons and the jaegerfang reeled away. It yowled and staggered but sprung again, unable to resist the bloody, helpless victim. The outline stopped just long enough to resolve into a man, exploding again in a puff of smoke and reappearing, again as he grappled the leaping grimm across the chest. It shrieked and reeled back, a sabre plunged deep into its shoulder. Thick and dark as oil, blood spewed from the wounds, spattering the enormous fern fronds which charred, curled and died.

The one she called Mushroom but was in fact a Dennis stared transfixed. He squinted his goggle eyes, turning his head from side to side to take in the new challenger. It was all happening too fast for his clumsy body to follow, pushed and pushed to the brink of exhaustion but suddenly the world seemed to hang in waiting.

The Hunter picked himself up, strolled a few steps to retrieve his second sabre and twirled his wrist experimentally. It sliced the air in relaxed swoops, _whoof, whoof, whoof_. He bent again, picked up a tricorn hat; powder blue, copper trim and with an enormous white feather that danced in the salty breeze. Dennis stared. Somewhere between a lion mane and briar bush beard were eyes that glinted like twin sapphires. He was huge. It was like someone had started shaving a circus bear and got mauled halfway through. His shoulders alone gave the impression of a freight ferry in a three point turn but he seemed at perfect ease, gliding as if on greased wheels and angled himself between the jaegerfang and his older brother, Morris.

The grimm raged. It snarled and pawed at the sword gouged deep behind its shoulder. It hooked a handle guard with a claw like a butcher's cleaver and it spun away into the darkness.

The mad man smiled a smile that was both friendly and dangerous. His sabre tip turned lazy eights but he turned to face Spade.

Dennis blinked. The new arrival had appeared so fast the Spade-cloaked leader and his Shade's unyielding grip were momentarily forgotten. He stood aloof behind his mask, head cocked. His gang coiled to attack at a word.

"Hi EVERYONE! How are _we tonight?!" _The voice boomed and shrank, like the annoying shotgun playing with the car radio. His eyes focused on the frozen tableau before him. "Let _him_ go," the Hunter said in a voice that was both cheerful and threatening. He grinned, it was a huge toothy grin.

"How do we feel, Garde," Spade said with low menace, "About a game of keep-away?"

_Not good!_ Dennis squeaked helplessly, struggling to hold Fawn back as she screamed empty threats. She jerked free, her elbow clouted his glasses crooked across his face and nose exploded in pain.

"I'll kill you!" she screeched over and over but the Brute flung her aside. Her skull dashed against a rock and knocked her dazed.

Dennis cursed and struggled to his always unreliable feet. He was always begging his brother to teach him, to let him learn but every time Morris pushed him aside and said _Let me do it_. Now he couldn't and Dennis couldn't do anything but stare at Morris's body dangling like meat in a window._ Is he even still breathing?_

_Please let him be breathing!_

The tall one howled laughter and leaped high into the air. His axe clattered and revolved, transforming and firing fiery volley in an explosive wave. Dennis grabbed his sister jerking her as the soil ripped up in a line aimed straight at them.

The Hunter blurred, vanished and appeared. Dennis couldn't see it but he could feel it, the flash off aura sparked his fist hammered the cannon balls back. _Left! Rght, goodnight_. The iron ball caught Howler full in the belly, barrelling him through an eroding brick wall in a plume of dust.

With his back turned the jaegerfang sped from the shadows for unconscious Morris. Hunter intervened just in time, slashing upwards, twirling and firing another buckshot spray into its hindquarters, and slashing again, driving it back. Suddenly he glowed again, molten silver poured off him and down his sword and he hacked! He hacked at the spindling dark arm still choking the life from the mouse faunus until it hissed out of existence like a snowflake in a flamethrower.

Suddenly the Hunter's back arched and he cried out. The grim slashed back, claws shredding the blue sleeve and raking through to the flesh. Through the pain he clasped his hands together, and clubbed it down on its enormous skull, but lost his momentum just before they struck. His shoulder sagged.

From a dark corner a lick of flame erupted from the girl's rifle. Snip snap, the rifle came apart, now a sword and pistol and she leapt into the air for the kill. Air whistled around the blade, clashed with the sabre and was turned aside, flicked around and the pistol fired. Dennis thought she saw the bullet whoosh through his bushy mane.

The Hunter was no stranger to hand to hand combat.

_One, two, right hook, jab, jab!_ An elbow cracked the cloaked woman's cheek and a knee to the gut sent her gasping out of range but the brute with the spear whip crashed between them and flicked his wrist and the spearhead lashed and slashed the Hunter's weakened shoulder. He grunted, but rallied with a bone cracking boot to Brute's sternum, forcing him down and holding him down. Suddenly a paw like a frying pan slashed past the Hunter's nose and then pounced for prone Morris. Another sabre-gun volley forced it back and back, with another splat of hair and foul, stinking carrion.

The jaegerfang turned its enormous head towards them. A fang the size of a walking stick was snapped and jagged. Its dark oily blood dripped from its skull and between burning, baleful eyes. The meal wasn't worth it, it skulked limping into the jungle, but it would remember.

Free from what seemed a mere distraction, the blue haired hunter turned his attention to the bullies. He trained his blade at the throat of the brute with more deodorant than brains. The tall skittish one pulled himself from the rubble and had his weapon in bazooka mode aimed square at the Hunter's chest, regardless of his friend. The woman with the sword-pistol-rifle thingy had chosen a vantage point on a dilapidated rooftop. And Spade...

"Now, you let him go, take a step back."

Spade appeared from the left, cowl low but for the fanged smile of his banana, pulled down for clearer speaking. To his chest he gripped Fawn, her face contorted in a grimace of pain and defiance and terror and from the black belled sleeve of his cloak protruded a sai sword. Lines of red and yellow dust wound around a hilt and the center point crackled with electricity. It dug into her throat, sending a tiny bloody bead dribbling down the spike.

"Do it or I hurl her right into those trees and big brother gets to see her torn apart before his eyes. Do you know what its like? I've seen it, They rip the body apart. They bathe in the victims blood, drain its lifeforce right through the skin." Spade's marble eyes became glassy with memory.

Dennis fumbled through the gritty rubble, for something, _anything_! He found Morris's fallen splinter and pulled it back like an uncertain baseball player. Maybe if he could just get in one good swing?

"Why do you care? You don't carry the faunus stink, I know that."

In an instant the Hunter's carriage changed from an aggressive whirlwind offense to one carefully neutral. It wasn't exactly non-threatening, just waiting. He tried to make eye contact, to read beyond the haughty body language, but only the thin lipped scowl remained visible. "What makes them so different?"

"What's the difference between yourself and a chimpanzee?" Spade said colourlessly. He yanked at a tiny ear protruding Fawn's pale brown hair and she squeaked between gritted teeth. "You think its just a mutation? You think its just some horns here or a tail there? I'm mad just because of a freak twist of phenotypes?"

The Hunter had one eye on Spade, his other as he bent down and gently placed two fingers beneath Morris's ragged hair. Dennis shot anxious glances between his brother and sister and the Hunter gave him a slight reassuring nod.

"It's in the blood, the bone. They may look human, but its a masquerade. It's skin stretched over the same unnatural dust as the _Grimm_. They're kindred, like seeks out like. Why else would they sniff them out like the vermin they are?"

"-Social stigma forcing them them to the most vulnerable rungs of society," the hunter interrupted nonchalantly.

Spade stumbled, but he hurtled onward. "They're _vulnerable_? They're a _liability_! They're a _plague_! They're the scum clinging to the outskirts of society! They're leeches bleeding Ambrose little by little, the more they pour in, the more grimm pummel our defences. Day by day, the more hunters we send out and fewer hunters return. Those that do are crippled, mangled and useless! More faunus freaks, more grimm and-"

"Or the documented increase of grimm means that the smaller faunus communities who lived outside Ambrose walls to avoid prejudice can no longer survive the constant onslaught, especially when the merchants of our Golden City refuse to supply the weapons, munitions and dust required to defend themselves."

"Further more the Faunus refugees will continue to struggle, settle and support themselves as long as businesses will neither employ nor serve them so they are forced to hunt, gather and scavenge outside the safety of the Fire Wall, leading and luring grimm back to where defences are weakest and there are fewest patrols."

"Whatever grimm may call a mind, they're not mindless. They may chase, but they also hide and stalk. Why take from the lowest tier, where they are always poised and ready for attacks, when you can breach the second Tier where the humans are lulled into security, unarmed and untrained to drain aura dry from rich, well fed, unstressed meat? Only the strongest and most cunning can make it that far. The rise in grimm has been meteoric, a precedent unseen since the season of the Longest Night."

Spade was more unglued than a than a students last minute diorama project., but whatever was holding Spade together cracked. He shattered.

He screamed and grabbed a handful of ear and hair and sank nails in deep with a vicious yank. Shade hands grew like stalks and grabbed her wrists, jerking them wide as a crucifix. His boot stamped down on the skinny bald tail lashing frantically around his ankles, baring her pale throat to be exposed, the hollow throbbing with every choked breath.

"Don't you dare talk about the Longest Night! You don't know anything about the goddamned Longest Night! I was there! They tore buildings apart like match sticks! The turrets and catapults and cannon fire did nothing, Dust did nothing. Blades shattered! They were everywhere like wolves among sheep, ripping and tearing! Blood was everywhere! In the gutters, on the walls! Dripping! Gushing! Spraying! Bodies! _What was left!_ And you know who they picked off first? The faunus! They picked them off, chased them and_ LEAD THEM RIGHT TO US!"_

The Hunter cocked his head. "You couldn't have been old enough to open your eyes back then. The past is fragile, how much is what you remember, and how much is what you were told, over and over again through the eyes that see darkly?"

Spade frothed in the grip of madness. The hood slipped for a fraction of a second, revealing the ghostly whites of his eyes and pupils shrunk like flecks of ink. His resolve stiffened in the vice grip of memories. He jerked her stiff, poised the sai and...

He shuddered. A noise like shattering crystal filled the clearing and exploded like discoball. Spade's body crumpled and staggered for balance. Fawn thrust the weapon from her throat and sank her teeth into sleeve, sharp rodent incisors like shearing blades. Shrieking he shoved her away, still clutching his head and limping in dizzy circles.

It happened in a blur.

The Hunter exploded. Aura burst and reformed into a swarming cloud, dark thunderheads zapping and crackling like lightning bursting through its seams. The cloud rose, and rushed!

It swallowed Brute was crushed like weight into the sand.

Like smoke in a tornado, Howler was flung back an unseen blow and disappeared beneath a shaky wall.

The silvery wind swept across the clearing. The girl shrieked as rotting roof tiles caved beneath her feet and dropped her like a doll.

It spun around Spade, a shape like a massive hand lifted up by collar, driven by sheer speed across the rubble and pinned to the trunk massive ficus by a fist that filled his world. It showed no mercy to the hand clawing for breath around an airway cinched tight. From deep within the shadows came the wary, eager rumble. Perhaps it would still feed.

With a sound like _wooosh_, the silvery, smoky particles pulled together into the seething form of the hunter, hand still tight around his throat.

"You're a boy, a misguided child so I'm giving you this chance and this warning. I don't know who you are, but I know who trained you. Tell her I'm back. I was weak, I ran but now I'm back to undo the damage. And the first step, our only hope, is a house united. Whatever it takes, no matter who's in my way. Her idiotic superstition ends, or she does."

Behind the Hunter's back, the cloaked girl had regained her footing and was taking aim. The Hunter did not flinch but from him came the same tidal force. It rose up, like the silver foaming wave crest, smashed the strewn bodies and sucked back like the undertow.

He released her, released him, release them. The thugs fled with cloaks flying behind them back into the Pens, but only with his permission.

The Hunter straightened and beamed. The mouse siblings had scrambled back from the Firewall and huddled, soothing each others pains and cuts in whispers. Dennis dusted himself off. A twisted ankle. Always the ankles. He must have been Cinderella in a past life. But otherwise okay. Morris fussed over Fawn, who as a strong independent almost-an-adult woman totally didn't need their help, but after saying so in a loud voice, she let Morris dab at her torn hear and carefully test her tail for broken bones. He ignored his own burns and cuts and the bruised hand marks that circled his neck like a choker. His chest spasmed trying to hold back thick, hacking coughs. After a moment, they stared owlishly at the human's enormous beaming grin.

"Just wait _there_! JUSTaminute, justaminiute" he said cheerfully, his voice still zipping around trying to find the right tone and pace and words collided together like a seven car pileup. He held his hands up and open as if in surrender. He strode fearlessly into the jungle, and after much crunching leaves and kicked aside debris he returned with his other saber-pistol, holding it up to the amber glow of the Seventh Torch.

"Ug, _grimm blood_," he grunted in distaste, bending down and rubbing handfuls of the sandy soil to polish the blades. "No matter what you do they still smell like battery acid a WEEK later."

He laughed with a what-can-you-do shrug and holstered the sabre-guns at his waist.

"NOW!" He turn towards the siblings who seemed rooted to the spot. The hunter chased every sentence like a kitten after yarn, tangling himself in knots and punctuation. His idiosyncratic voice without volume control or tempo was both hypnotizing and terrifying. And he _grinned. _A grin that peaked out through his face like a crescent moon through thick canopy. "My name is Mercutio Maddox and that- THAT!- was impressive! An aura attack at that distance, at your age, with no training!"

Morris stood up despite his siblings trying to pull him back down. He rubbed his throat. It looked like frost bite. "It wasn't me," he rasped and carefully put himself guardedly in before Mister Maddox. "But I could feel them."

Easy going puzzlement crossed Maddox's goofy features. "Iliketothink I am a pretty observant guy, I didn't see ANYONE!"

Morris stepped into the light and Dennis saw Maddox's spark of recognition. The glassy sheen and fixed pupils that didn't track his face or gestures. "I'm blind. When I was fifteen, it was blurry. By sixteen I needed glasses." Behind him, Dennis straighten frames with lenses thick as telescopes but Morris picked his way confidently over the rubble, sidestepping loose stone and lifting high over a toppled beam. "And by the time I was seventeen everything was black. Except it wasn't. I have fine tuned my semblance to more than sense aura but see it. I can see yours Mr Maddox. Most people haven't unlocked theirs. I see it circulate their body, slow and sluggish with colours like faded curtains. But yours is like quick silver and evaporates like smoke. It leaps out, playful fish from a waterfall! It isn't trapped like most peoples, it's contained and disciplined but when it's called, and when it does it glares like the sun!"

Dennis couldn't help but roll his eyes at his brothers purple prose, but he at least understood why. They were all scruffy, underfed and simply dressed, but when he spoke it was like poetry. He used his words and voice like a paintbrush, carefully chosen tones and rich with the images of the world he never wanted to forget.

"I saw their aura. It was like mist over an icy pond swinging a ball like a streaming comet that fractured like mirrors across Spade's temple. I saw them before. They were hiding in the Pens, and then followed us."

Maddox's easily distracted attention skirted the old houses and forest edge and suddenly appeared at the eldest brothers side, shielding his moving lips. "Are THEY still here?!"

Morris's mouse ears flattened against the exaggerated stage whisper but help each palm out. With effort, the other three could see the faint grey waves pulsing like sonar. Moritz held his arms outright with palms "I can only reach about seven, maybe eight meters and I think they exhausted their aura in the attack. I can neither sense nor see."

"Hmmm, JUST like the Mines of Morlocke," Maddox grinned, suddenly chasing another stray thought. "We had a hound faunus that smelled aura and we were chasing a thief and he took us down that shaft and this seam until, boom, we hit a an underground river and the trail was dead! And Cohen exhausted the last of his aura. Five HUNDRED! feet below the surface, and no way to know which tunnel would take us home or even deeper! And- hey! Wait, wait, wa-aaait! Where are you going?"

"No offence Mister," Fawn said in the bored tones of young people refusing to get swept up in old fart's nostalgia. "But we aren't sticking around where jaegerfang hunt. This place smell like yuk."

"She's right," Dennis shivered, forever pushing glasses much to big for over the bridge of his tiny button nose which he stretched into the air "We're not the only ones they've brought here. There's layers of old blood."

"Is that so?"

"Yes Mister Maddox sir, years. All faunus." Dennis clambered over the rocks with none of the grace of his older brother, stumbling and thrown off as the rubble slide under boots much to big. "But I guess none of them were as lucky as us."

"Hmm, is that so? Well-" Maddox left the word hanging.

"Dennis, and that's Morris, and she's Fawn. We're family."

"Well duh, Denny," Fawn said, at the stage in life where sarcasm was the alpha and omega of all wit. She was already flicking her head in a let's go already gesture.

"And are YOU, are you? _Are yoooou_ as accomplished as your brother, Dennis?" Maddox chattered, his grin so wide it threatened to split his head in half.

"I'm learning," he answered carefully. Although this was correct, it wasn't exactly honest. His aura hadn't stirred as much as an ounce in the last two years of trying. "But I'm less of a show off than Morris!"

"Excellent! EXCELLENT! Then you are exactly the kind of kids I'm looking for!" the enormous man suddenly swept a brother under each arm with a cheek squishing squeeze. "I'm looking for kids JUST your age full of vim and vinegar!"

Maddox spun them around like carousel horses and while still hugging them tight pointed to the night sky. "Have you ever wanted to live there?"

Their gaze followed to the towering cliff peninsula of Lux, and sticking its gigantic middle finger in the air to every grimm in a hundred mile radius was the lighthouse Lux Aeterna.

His siblings staunchly refused school, it was a waste of time for some fantasy future, but Dennis went as often as he dared. It also turned out that the Second Tier's public library was a great place to hide when you were being chased and you couldn't help but pick things up.

Dennis knew about _Lux Aeterna_. Even rarer than Amber Crystal was the legendary Gold Crystal, which needed no refining or mixing or complicated refracting arrays. It was one of the few elemental dust types amongst the millions of chemically mixed compounds. All it needed was a light source. A child's birthday candle could flashfry a grimm in seconds. _Poof!_

And although Dennis could never hope to see it up close, the crown of Lux Aeterna was paned in stained glass made with this very rare dust. It burned like sun, flickering and flashing and casting its protective glow across the First Tier of the city where only the richest could afford its security.

What Mister Maddox was obviously pointing to was the golden castle beneath, always lit by Aeterna's warm glow. It was Magna Opus, the Hunter School of Ambrose.

"Ha!" it was a loud sneering Ha! And Morris pushed Maddox's friendly arm off his shoulders. "What, a roof over our heads and enough food to bloat an elephant? Yeah, sounds great,except Old Black Hart would never let a faunus into Magna Opus!"

"Hart?" The name threw Maddox off balance for an second and Dennis remembered he said he had been away.

"Principal Gildroy adopted her after the Longest Night," Dennis quoted from memory, and he saw Maddox's anchored grin showed a hairline crack but vanished in an instant. That unchanging smile made Dennis uneasy. It was the same riveted flap mouthed grins the animatronic animals at Chezza Cheeze wore as they jerked through manically cheerfully songs. A twitch, a glitch, quickly fixed. "He made her Principal after he retired, but now he's on the Town Council as Minister for Education."

"Ahh, double uh-oh. But... But-BUT-but! But," Maddox's booming voice raced ahead, trying find the end of the sentence. Finally he caught it, gently, softly. "But what if _I_ could give you that? I could give you a bed, _each_. Three meals a day. And train you to defend yourself. And protect others. And perhaps, if you're good, a little put aside for a rainy day. What if I gave you a place with others like you, a place to belong? Family?"

Morris's head cocked and eyes narrowed. Sea breezes bringing the ever present sludgy smell of the mangroves, and Dennis held his breath, both disgusted and hopeful. Catching his brother's eye was impossible but the flickering of the Torch made them almost seem alive again.

"You're talking about a Hunter's School. For faunus. I've seen the Hunters coming back, like patched rag dolls. There can't be a hundred standing Hunters left in the city. And you want to the faunus kids to be your front line troops, your cannon fodder?"

"Oh no! No, no no! NO! The Ambrose Hunters are weak because they've grown stale and their fears have made them lost. Magna Opus is the stream that feeds their stagnant pool and it's slowed to a trickle. Ambrose looks to its hunters for protection, but how does it look when they fear change as much as grimm? That feeling of mistrust permeates the community in so many little ways..."

Maddox voice trailed off, lost in the distant waves and gurgling Varden River. The excitement in is voice had drained away into disappointment. "But what if there were faunus Ambrose everyone could look up to? I have teachers, classrooms and resources. Oh it'll be long, and hard, but it's a start?"

Dennis's lips went dry and his own mouth twitched, splitting into a grin as big as Maddox. They shone at Morris like a pair of high beam headlights. His suspicious scowl remained unmoved.

"You want us to fight grimm?"

"I'd like you to fight society's expectations."

By now even little Fawn was creeping with ears pricked. "With hunter weapons?"

"Like I could have gun-blade? Or a bazooka-spear? Or-" Still arm-locked, Dennis's eyes glazed in wonder. Dennis, who had trouble walking a straight line and reading big letters in a well lit room.

Maddox nodded eagerly. "There is a weapon for everyone, and we can train you. Defense, hand to hand combat, aura protection. There is a weapon for everyone. We can unlock your semblance."

Morris didn't care about defending the people, or making life better for faunus everywhere. Some things were important. "And three meals a day? Big ones?"

"Enough. And technically it's _brunch_ on Sunday."

"You said you found others?" Morris asked in the tentative tone of a man testing ice, prepared to yank back at the first thin crunch.

"Yes, my colleagues and I have been keeping an eye out for promising young faunus for a while now. A sprightly kangaroo boy. A bat, a skunk, a frog, a marmot-"

"What's a marmot?"

Maddox scratched his head impishly. "Don't rightly know, but apparently she fights like a lion with a thorn in its paw! But the point is we're looking for faunus between the ages of sixteen and twentyone-"

"Wait, I'm thirteen what about me?!" Fawn cried out incredulously, her tail whipping back and forth like a live wire as she darted over the rocks to challenge Maddox face to face.

"Yes, what about Fawn," demanded the oldest brother. He gabbed both siblings away with yelps and dragged them behind him. His aura leak out like light through a door crack, but what did he plan to do with it?

"I have friends," Maddox waved his hands frantically trying to soothe. "She'll stay there until she's older and-"

"No." The word crash down like a hammer in a way that silenced the Hunter. "Either it's _all_ of us, or _none_ of us."

Whatever else, Maddox respected family. "Alas, I won't make that exception. Arcadia Academy is a school, not an orphanage but if you change your mind HERE is an invitation." He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a small card. "Meet us here, at this time and we'd be glad to have you."

Morris left the outstretched card hanging, but as Dennis reached out for it, he snatched it, balled it up and threw it over his shoulder into the sand.

"We appreciate your offer, Mr Maddox," Morris finished coldly, "But we can't take it. Good night. Good bye."

Morris didn't need to herd them, they turned and filed back into the ruined Last Quarter of Ambrose. Fawn fumed angrily at the nerve, but Dennis looked back wistfully until they were out of sight.

Maddox lingered for a thoughtful moment. Unfortunate really but everyone had to do what was best for themselves.

Trying to follow Maddox's train of thought was as complex as untangling the short circuiting Christmas lights. Bulbs lit up and dimmed and zapped on seemingly at random. First here, then there, as his smoky form dispersed and reforming like a broken hologram around the clearing. A churned up footprint here, a broken branch, some fibres caught on thorns over _there_. Finally he knelt in the sandy soil. It was damp, but then so were most things in Ambrose with its constant humidity. He scratched at the ground, let the grains fall through his fingers in clumps.

So did something else.

He picked it up and held the shard up to the torch, watching it take the warm radiance of the Torch and twisting it in beautiful arcs across until it melted away between his fingers. His platter hands sieved deeper into the dirt and found something else. A yellow disk, warped.

Maddox stood, flipping the disk like a coin and peered out into the trees. Maybe the jaegerfang had slunk off to like its wounds, maybe it was still out there. As he drifted out into the forest he began to smoke. It curled out from his sleeves, his jacket, his shaggy hair and slowly yet sure he evaporated into the night air. All that was left were shining white teeth, and even they vanished into the jungle.

* * *

><p>Domino opened her eyes.<p>

She sprawled on her back trying not to sound like a clogged nostril but every inch of her ached. She tried to sit up but the world tipped and she smashed face first back into the gritty sand of the Pens. Spluttering and groaning, she tried to take stock. _What happened?_

She was hiding behind a bombed out house, those thugs where smashing up the mice kids and that fella turned up... _And that sludge of a human being started slagging off faunus!_

Her skin flushed and she shoved herself angrily up but her elbows were having none of it and she thumped again into the dirt. Every muscle was complaining, every joint felt brittle and even her skin felt parched and dried up.

Her plump, piggy face lit up.

_Because you did it!_

There she was, huddled in the bombed out shell of a house shaking with fear and disgust watching those thugs- _the Garde?_- just toy with the mice. Batting them around and giggling like school children pulling the wings of butterflies. And then that guy turned up, and Spade started spewing all that... poison. All that poison bottled up, building pressure inside his skull and then exploding like a champagne cork.

Domino had heard it all before... Faunus were diseased, were deviants, were subhuman... but never had she heard it justify the kind of sadism before her.

And Domino's fear turned to fury. Every name, every harsh word, every taunt clamoured around her ears like swarming hornets. Every time she had been pushed aside, shoved away and dismissively ignored boiled under her skin. Every time she had been left alone, impotent, weak, helpless and just accepting all those little cruelties that went with being faunus because there was nothing else she could do...

...Not now.

_Never again._

The pig's aura fumed around her. It hissed and sloshed and poured off her like liquid nitrogen. But she wouldn't let it get away from her, not this time. She dug down, reached deep into the well of power her aura came from. _Everything_, she needed every drop.

That balled up energy fizzed inside her chest, building pressure as Spade spewed his hatred. It boiled and writhed, until it exploded like like a star. Domino cast her aura out in a shining, fine woven net, snatched every molecule and hugged it to her body. _Mirage_, her shield. It churned around her like deep water currents, always there, always sheltering her, but it wasn't enough.

Domino glanced down. The power yanked and jerked her ashen hair in ribbons around her. Her piggy ears flopped. Her dusty clothes ruffled. Her hands clenched around her yoyo, nails gouging into the cheap plastic. Spreading out beneath them as fine as lace, crystals.

_Yes,_ she thought with a tusked smile. _Not enough._

Domino's aura swirled about her. She channelled into tighter and tighter circles, cracking and crunching, layer after layer of ice until it coated Blitzer as big as an orange and solid as a shot put.

Still with her protective invisibility, she took the frost crusted sting and flicked her wrist. She twirled it in longer and faster arcs until the glittering ball of ice jerked and fought against her like a vicious dog on a frayed lead.

Spade grabbed the girl, yanked her ear. Domino fed in the last of the energy and... just... let..._go..._

And then she must of blacked out because the next thing she knew she was eating dirt with her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth like a dead fish. It felt like a hangover. Her head _clanged_.

Finally Domino had the strength to stand. She grabbed at a crumbling wall to right herself. What was the time? Oh, dad was going to kill her. Wait. _Did she miss out on Dim Sum?_! She half staggered, half crawled out of the rubble, the sandy clearing was now empty. She sniffed.

The Garde was gone. The Hunter was gone. The kids were gone.

"Eh, so much for being a hero! Not even a thank you?!" Domino gave a piggy grunt. At least it was a god story to tell the guys at work. With a few minor details tidied up of course. And maybe a flying death kick. Those are always good in a heroic rescue.

As she steadied herself for a third time, grumbling and wondering where to put the third ninja when something caught her eye. A card, half buried and crumpled. Smoothing it over her knee. It was a time, a date and a place. What did it mean? In the bottom corner were some lines that kind of looked like the stranger's feathered hat.

He was a Hunter. You could tell by his training and weapons, and he stood up for faunus. Did he want to give this to the thugs? The faunus kids? For what?

She stared again. A time. A date. A place. It meant something, and somehow she had to find out what.

**MEET US IN AMBROSE. 1st of July, 6 PM. PIER 15**

* * *

><p><strong>Authors Notes by Bushtuckapenguin<strong>

**__( arcadiaacademy dot net )__**

_G'day RWBY readers! As mentioned this chapter and story are a part of something much larger. Domino and mates belong to the Arcadia Academy Fanzine which is basically a big interactive fanfiction and we are always welcoming new members. There you can find an illustrated version of this chapter, along with bios, galleries, forums and a chatbox with fellow OC enthusiasts._

_Here's the cool part, for anyone who has ever wanted art of their RWBY OC characters, there's some resources available even if you're not an Arcadian. As well as getting fanart you can ask for OC reviews, fanfic reviews, join games and get writing tips with our in-site currency called Lien!_

_Come on, I know you're curious, check us out!_


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